Most Popular Board Games, Ranked

Every Board Game You've Ever Played, Ranked

If you grew up in North America in the '80s or '90s, you probably fondly remember those board games you played on rainy afternoons. Maybe there’s warm cocoa involved, perhaps your family is smiling, and your pal from down the street is over for dinner so he’s playing too, etc. Yet despite this cozy flashback, my goal here (as a games theorist working on my Ph.D.) is to shatter any form of nostalgia you have for the unfortunate era of 20th-century table-top play. The following is a list of 15 games you’ve almost certainly played at some point, and probably still think are good.

Generally speaking, you're wrong, but it’s not your fault. You’re probably too busy to play contemporary games, or maybe you’re too lazy to Google “best board game of the year,” or you actually are that great-grandma who still prefers silent films. Regardless, just think of this article as community service, protecting the youth from your terrible idea of what a good present is, or even just promoting the works of current designers who actually care about making games. I've included the BoardGameGeek.com ranking of all the games (ranks are out of 11,000) to give you an idea where the most popular games fall — note that here they are ranked from best to worst. Let's just say that a lot of classics fall below the 10,900 mark.

Catan (1996)

Amazon

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 155th

One should not poo-poo Catan. Sure, it’s a European colonialist fantasy of arriving to a magical new piece of land without inhabitants, save for a wandering thief (who just happens to be represented by a black pawn, cough), but it really did catapult board game design into uncharted territory. “Downtime” is low because everyone gets to play on everyone else’s turn, collecting and trading resources. The game ends at a reasonable and regular 90 minutes. Best of all, it’s easy enough to understand and just good enough to make you want something better. That’s why they call it a “gateway” game.$42.00 at Amazon.com

Trivial Pursuit (1981)

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 10,909th

Almost everyone who has played Trivial Pursuit knows how annoying the pointless roll-and-move mechanics are. With such an excellent variety of quality questions, the game is still quite good. Many people’s gut reaction is to simply read the cards and, if they even care, invent their own method of scoring points. They are not wrong. But seriously, you'd have a better time playing Wits and Wagers, which actually introduces strategic thinking into trivia.$39.99 at Amazon.com

Chess (1475)

It's dry on theme, and ultimately repetitive, but my real gripe with chess is the reading. The game is so damn unintelligible that improvement comes from absorbing chess books. Yawn. You literally need to read a former U.S. president’s study-sized volume of tomes before you can imagine competing with the top players. The infamous Bobby Fischer knew this, which is why he invented Chess 960 (which everyone else calls Fischer Chess). Randomize the back row of your starting pieces, have the opponent's pieces mirror yours and then play. With 960 possible starting positions, it becomes literally impossible to read enough to master the game ;)$35.00 at Amazon.com

Scrabble (1948)

Wikimedia Commons

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 1,110th

My mother enrolled me in Scrabble lessons when I was 10. Don’t ask. It was then I learned the optimal strategy for someone with such a penurious vocabulary as my puerile self. Close the board, literally saddle your words up the side of other words until no one can play anything longer than five-letter words. Welcome to hell. All of a sudden you have a four-hour game of slow-paced misery on your hands, as each turn sees two more letters hit the table. Now, you might recommend I keep the board open and lose gracefully, but then I’d just tell you to drill holes in the tiles and make some tacky bracelets. That’s Etsy gold! $16.99 at Amazon.com

Pictionary (1985)

This game is pretty good. You get to draw stuff and yell at people for being useless. You should play it — and then you should play the folk game “Eat Poop You Cat,” which offers the brilliant insight that no one playing Pictionary does it for the sense of competition — people just want to make silly drawings and have their friends laugh at them. Eat Poop You Cat fixes all that; it's basically broken telephone with sentences and drawings, and you can find the rules here.$24.99 at Amazon.com

Ticket to Ride (2004)

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 82nd

When people think about Ticket to Ride, they think trains, set collection, elegantly simple, and maybe even quick to play. When I think about this game, I think about self-immolation. Full-stop. Not in a bad way. I mean everyone has to see what it’s like to singe one’s skin, build character, know death, etc. That said, only some deep-seated masochism would provide a reason to repeat the process. I hear the sequels are better, but as they say, fool me once, blah blah blah… I guess this is what passes for a recommendation?$49.99 at Amazon.com

Uno (1971)

Mattel

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 10,783rd

This is a great game for people who don’t realize they can play the same thing with normal pack of cards and half a brain — it’s called Crazy Eights. I am not going to give it the time of day, but I will point you to a variant called “Mao.” (The full rules are here). Basically you get four or more friends together and tell one of them you are playing a variant of Uno/Crazy Eights — but not the others. Once the game starts, both of you penalize anyone who talks or fails to play in the correct way by giving them cards from the pack. This is meant to simulate a totalitarian state in which the masses are not allowed to question the rules — they may only learn them through failure. Some people (including myself) find that a lot of fun. Others will never play a game with you again. If anyone wins, they get to make up a new secret rule, allowing them to further police play. After a few rounds, the game is pretty much pandemonium. Stay sober, though — this game only works if everyone cares.$9.99 at Amazon.com

Apples to Apples (1999)

Out of the Box

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 1,757th

In its heyday, this was the best party game on the block. Dealer draws an adjective card, everyone secretly places a matching noun card, dealer picks their favourite and BAM! — instant hilarity. Then it was re-imagined by Cards Against Humanity — which, despite (or probably because of) its political incorrectness, managed to hijack 20% of all college parties between the years 2012 and 2013. Don’t play either of these games without also trying Dixit, which uses surrealist images instead of words.$26.99 at Amazon.com

Yahtzee! (1956)

Parker Brothers

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 10,905th

In the ‘50s, some guy called Edwin Lowe figured people loved rolling a die and yelling "Bingo!" At least, that's how I imagine Yahtzee! was invented. Despite the abhorrent amount of luck and extremely dry theme of shouting a meaningless word, this game is actually pretty good at teaching people how to think both strategically and statistically. And while you might tear your hair out after your kid sister’s highly improbable roll of five straight ones ruins your meticulous plans, at least you got an opportunity to make some plans in the first place.$12.99 at Amazon.com

Risk (1959)

Hasbro

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 9,429th

This game is bad: It is determined by luck, takes forever, and eliminates players, all cardinal sins in game design. Yes, we all know your killer strategy: Take Australia early. Boring. Imagine if the real world worked like that? Australia would be some kind of soldier factory for the commonwealth, which for hundreds of years has been biding its time until bursting forth in one glorious blitzkrieg. Before our Aussie overlords come for us, I would recommend putting down your randomly determined runaway-winner problems in order to play something worthwhile. Before you say it, let me tell you that Axis and Allies also sucks. For a multi-player strategy game involving territory control, try Maria, Shogun, or if you don’t like thinking thaaat much, Nexus Ops. $29.99 at Amazon.com

Connect Four (1974)

Hasbro

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 10,964th

This is basically an abstract strategy game which finds a way to charge people money for the privilege of playing tic-tac-toe. Like tic-tac-toe, it’s known as a “solved” game — meaning the first player has a way to win every game if playing perfectly — though most human brains are too weak to compute for guaranteed victory. In addition to the absence of any theme to speak of or even interesting aesthetics, Connect Four lacks intelligibility. Most of the time, you have no way to tell if the move you just played was great or simply good, because of the opacity of the board. And for a game with no dice, it still manages to result in essentially random outcomes. Blergh.$12.99 at Amazon.com

Clue (1949)

Hasbro

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 6,591st

Instead of blaming Mr. Pratt, Clue’s designer, for its failings, I'm just going to assume he didn’t know any better. First things first, feed the dice to your garbage disposal. They only serve to waste people’s time rolling, removing their agency and literally offering them meaningless turns in which they do not roll well enough to reach a room and ask a question. You’re already waiting through everyone else’s boring turn, haven’t you suffered enough? While serious Clue players have invented complex ways to solve this problem, which you might look up at your convenience, movement is clearly not the exciting reason to play. Just allow players to move to any adjacent room at the beginning of their turn and leave it at that. Or play Sleuth, which isn’t that good either.$12.99 at Amazon.com

Battleship (1931)

Funskool

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 10,983rd

Some might call it a mind game in which one attempts to determine the patterning on the opponent’s position. I would say it’s like playing six simultaneous games of tic-tac-toe with a blindfold on, but without the strategy (or the kink). To be fair, it works well as a drinking game, particularly after your naval officers (and sorrows) have been thoroughly drowned. $16.99 at Amazon.com

The Game Of Life (1960)

Milton Bradley

Boardgamegeek.com Rank: 10,994th

This particular piece of cardboard torture is heralded by many of its contemporary reviewers as the worst game ever made. Not only does it cost a fair amount of money, it offers absolutely zero interesting decisions, and unlike others of its ilk, takes up a serious amount of time. I would call this a particularly painful betrayal, given how pretty the game actually looks. If you are interested in a bas-relief for your apartment, look no further, the pop-up plastic pieces are to die for...$21.99 at Amazon.com

Monopoly (1933)

Wikimedia Commons

While most would disparage this game due to its dependence on luck and unpredictably long session times, I will offer an alternative denigration. Monopoly, originally titled “The Landlord’s Game” by Elizabeth Magie, was an early piece of socialist feminism, co-opted by men to make profit by celebrating unregulated markets. Monopoly’s sole redeeming trait is its usefulness as a paradigmatically bad game — it’s like the Batman & Robin of board games. Despite these characterizations, it remains the best-selling board game year after year because people forget how terrible it is and how pointless re-theming it to Star Wars planets or PGA Tour courses is. The next time you want to get someone a gift and think a novelty version of Monopoly is a good idea, consider getting them a copy of Karl Marx's Das Kapital instead.$17.99 at Amazon.com

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